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News Wrapup: 16/5/17

Cult game Phantom Dust will have its HD remaster released tomorrow on the Xbox One and Windows 10 store for free. It is a remaster of a 2004 action game with strategy card game elements and comes after a followup to the game was cancelled by Microsoft in 2015. This version will be an Xbox Play Anywhere game allowing crossplay between PC and Xbox One and will be slightly reworked allowing patches to balance and new downloadable content.

Opinion: I have never heard of or have played this game before as I was a strictly PS2 guy. Interesting move by Microsoft to release this for free and with all the talk of multiplayer balance it makes me think that they may try to push this as a niche Hearthstone competitor. It sounds interesting but it will be interesting to see the DLC model as there has to be a reason it is free.

ZeniMax, parent company of Bethesda, filing suit against Samsung for Gear VR.

ZeniMax, a large parent company owning many game studios and publishers, is filing a suit against Samsung for technology used in their Gear VR headset. ZeniMax has previously won an enormous $500million USD against Oculus VR after convincing the jury that the Oculus tech had been acquired due to illegal collaboration between former members under the ZeniMax umbrella. They were not found guilty of stealing trade secrets but they were found guilty of numerous other offences. ZeniMax is accusing Samsung of profiting from the same technology and they want their cut.

Opinion: There is a lot of money being thrown around here and while I am not well informed on the financial positions of these companies, I feel like companies such as Oculus taking such heavy losses may damage the VR industry. VR is still a fledgling and niche market and I fear events like these may damage the credibility of the product. It will be interesting to see the results of the case against Samsung to see if it has similar results.